Sunday, July 17, 2005

Anti-San Diego Link Blogging

Because there's enough Comic Con coverage out there that I think our loyal readers(all 5 of them, half of which might be reading this on a Sunday) deserve better than regurgitated content about which inker Marvel signed to an exclusive contract or how many new Infinity Crisis tie-in mini-series have been comissioned. No, you all deserve regurgitated content that has nothing to do with San Diego, that's what you'll get! Besides, our on-site correspondent Chris Burton should be along shortly with his Con report, taking care of you on that end.*

Tim O'Neil has an interesting look at why DC's currently lighting up the sales charts. It covers more ground than just sales figures, though, including this paragraph about Marvel's perception of their audience:

"What amazes me is not so much that DC is suddenly gaining on Marvel in both solid market share and anecdotal "buzz", but that it took this long. From a business standpoint, Marvel hasn't really had a lot up their sleeve for a while. More importantly, they seem to have forgotten how to make the comics people want to read."

"As much as Joe Quesada and Co. did to turn Marvel around in the late 90s and early 00s, it must be admitted that they don't have a clue what to do now that they've lost their momentum. Looking at something like House of M or Secret War (from a distance, mind you) should be enough to convince anyone that they lost something very vital in the intervening years: they lost the intuitive insight as to what their core customers want."

Also, he comes up with much better titles for the Infinity Crisis tie-in minis than DC did, like OMAC: Not The Jack Kirby One So Who Fucking Cares and Not Really Secret Society of Super-Villains But Who Are We Trying To Kid, and if that doesn't entice you to read, nothing will.

Over at Comic Book Galaxy, Diana Tamblyn has a report about the Seth Exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario, with quotes from the man himself about what it means to him:

"It's extremely exciting to be exhibited here. At no point would I have ever imaginged that my work would be displayed in this sort of setting... It's good for cartooning, and.it's a move toward normalacy, so maybe people won't think about as much as a bastard art form."

Over at Listen To Us, We're Right, that warmongering jerk Joe Rice does something useful for once and gives us a guest post from a blogger of substance. A man who can effortlessly dismiss any hack in his path. The blogsphere has needed his no bullshit style criticism, and we're lucky to have him. I'm talking about Ben Grimm of course, who gives us a review of the movie currently in theatres that features his likeness:

"But whatever. Comics about orange bastards like me ain't gonna be art nine times outta ten anyways. You get that Crumb guy to do our comic, or that fella that did Ghost Planet and you'll see something real nice. But that ain't what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about that goddam shitty movie about us. Christ, I'm made of orange rocks and I can smell that shit a mile away. Don't mollycoddle that poorly-made piece of shit because it's got me in it and I'm played by the Commish."

Since nothing can top the Thing talking shit about his own movie, and trying to find non-Comic Con related news on the last day of Comicon is hard, I think it's best to cut my losses now and take my leave.

*At least he would have if he'd been told he was supposed to be our on-site correspondent. I kinda forgot to inform him about that. It would have been pretty great, too. You'll just have to imagine all the cool shit he would have written about the Con instead of any actual content. Do it now. Wasn't that cool? Yes, yes it was. Probably better than what Burton would have come up with, in fact. So everyone wins.

2 Comments:

(1) Yeah. In a weirdly random sorta way, DC seems to have tapped the comic-reader zeitgiest in a way that Marvel hasn't.

Or maybe comics fans are feeling nostalgic for the early nineties where everything sucked, and they're buying up the new DC Infinite whatever books which suck to bring them back to those happy days where ANY semblance of quality was grounds for celebration.

(2) Seth is a really good comics maker guy, but I disagree with him. I LIKE that comics are a bastard artform. The veil of respectibility would make the whole comics thingy less cool t' me.

(3) I liked the Fantastic Four flick. Totally thought they nailed the character bits, and that made up for all the plot and storyline and coherence and turning Doctor Doom all crappy stuff that they didn't nail.